Our Philosophy

Our philosophy is based upon our strong belief that every child deserves the best education, delivered by the best people, to ensure that they have the best possible chance to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

As a team, we have four core values that form the cornerstones of our philosophy and give shape and direction to everything that we do for young people:

* Aspiration * Relationships * Growth * Compassion

Aspiration

We believe that every young person in our school should be pushed to achieve the best that they possibly can. We put no ceiling on potential, but rather encourage every young person to aim for the highest possible outcome. We set them aspirational targets, instilling in them the belief that they can achieve anything they put their mind to. Our faith in them is repaid by the most incredible stories of success, with our young people achieving very high levels of Literacy and National Qualifications by the time they move onto the next step on their journey. As individual teachers and as a team, everything that we do is driven by the commitment we have to enabling your child to achieve at the highest level they possibly can.

Relationships

We know from experience that the stronger the relationships are between young people and staff in a school community, the higher the quality of learning is that takes place. Quite simply, relationships allow learning to flourish, and this is an area we invest a lot of our time in. We work together with young people, taking time to understand them as individuals first and foremost, and are genuinely fortunate to share this part of their journey with them. When the challenge is increased in Senior School as they move towards examinations, it is our strong relationships with them, forged over time, that allow us to support them in order to meet the high levels of challenge that they face. Relationships are important to us, which is why we invest in building positive relationships with young people, parents and carers, and the wider learning community.

Growth

Whilst we strive to get the absolute best for every young person in our care, we understand that failure is a crucial part of the learning process. We also know that failure is a difficult thing to accept at times, which is why our practice is firmly rooted in developing a growth mindset in our young people. We will encourage your child to set the bar high, to value hard work and practice over traditional misconceptions of inate intelligence, to reflect on failure and embrace it as a way to improve, and to see learning as a continuous process rather than a destination. As a team of teachers, we live and work in this way, and believe it is a truly critical component for providing your child with the skills to cope with the increasing challenges and demands of the world they are living in.

Compassion

This is perhaps the value that lies closest to the fabric of who we are and what we do. Whilst we are language specialists with a passion for our subject areas, we are first and foremost a team of people who work with children. This can be a challenge at times, because as well as being responsible for the learning journey of young people, we deal with a whole range of emotions, situations, hopes, dreams, setbacks and traumas. We work with children during a very critical time of their lives, which is a responsibility we take very seriously. Throughout all of this, we treat every child who comes through our faculty with compassion. We strive to understand rather than to judge; to listen rather than instruct; to care and nurture rather than enforce or dismiss. We believe in the value of relationships and we understand that young people rely on us for much more than the knowledge we pass onto them. Compassion lies at the heart of everything we do, and will always shape the the way in which we treat your child.

These are the cornerstones of our philosophy, and for us represent the non-negotiables of how we operate as a team, the expectations we have of young people, and the daily interaction we have with everyone in our learning community.